


Blood and Dust

by Cards_Slash



Series: Second Verse [10]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gun Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23545087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: There wasn't a single person behind the barricade that was where they ever thought they'd be.  Not Bobo, not Doc, not Wynonna, and definitely not the other revenants.  But they had a common enemy and their best chance at survival lay in working together.
Relationships: Doc Holliday/Bobo Del Rey | Robert Svane
Series: Second Verse [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632727
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Blood and Dust

The RVs had not been fully emptied because it would have taken too much time to remove the debris. Howard had gone through with his clipboard and marked the furniture that had to be demolished or removed to give everyone the best chance of cover and a window to shoot through. The broken bits of furniture were piled into the empty ends of the RV in some hope that they would help absorb any bullets before they could reach the homestead behind them. 

David, Dowdy, Jim and a strange-faced man that Doc could not remember the name of had been screwing plywood and metal plates to the outside of the RVs, creating what passed for a shield when you didn’t have the time to put one together properly. 

Wynonna was standing in the center of the RV, rocking back and forth on her feet as the metal plate that served as a floor squeaked and groaned under her weight. She had two arms full of rifles they were leaving by the windows. “This is insane,” she said softly when it was only the two of them. “Do you get used to things like this?”

Doc had been in enough shootouts to have some concept of the answer, but it felt like the sort of thing that might have made more sense to ask Dolls. All of Doc’s shootouts had been with weapons slightly less capable of killing a man. These modern things didn’t require the precision of his day but that made them _more_ deadly. “No,” he said. 

She sighed, “what happens when this is all over, Doc? What am I supposed to do? I’m the _heir_ , it’s my _job_ to kill all of the revenants. If I don’t do it--this all starts over.” 

He dropped the milk-carton of bullets on the floor by the window and took a moment, watching Lawrence hoist another giant rock off the back end of a big ass truck to really think how he _wanted_ to answer that question. The whole thing seemed stupid to him and maybe that had been the point the demon had been trying to make. He was torturing both sides with one curse. When he looked back at Wynonna, she was wincing while she waited. 

“The witch thought there was a way to end the curse. Maybe she was just using the _idea_ to keep Bobo behaving how she wanted or maybe there is a way. There’s always more than one answer. There’s more witches. There has to be a way to end this without sending these fine men back to hell.”

\--

Howard was laying in the ditch, flat on his belly along the soggy slope up to the RVs because he was making a _point_ about how it would slow them down to try to lay that way. “See?” he was capping onto the end of a five minute demonstration that Bobo hadn’t even needed. 

Deputy Marshal Dolls had the look of a man who expected to be dead in a few hours, but he still looked over at Bobo as if to ask if he had also found the demonstration to be a waste of their time. Bobo wasn’t going to admit to anything when it was his boys being shot through first. “Well,” Dolls said, “good thinking.”

Howard was a smart enough man to know when he was being condescended to. He pushed himself out of the mud with a smile that matched the tone of the words he’d been offered. “Plenty of good fights have been lost over bad footing.”

“So, we’ve got Waverly and Nicole upstairs in the house,” Dolls said rather than attempt to address anything that Howard had said. “We don’t have a lot of weapons with enough range to compensate for the barricade so they won’t be as effective at offense, but they’ll give us an advantage to know where the assault is coming from.”

“Hui’s...somewhere,” Bobo said.

“Somewhere?”

It was best not to ask Hui too much about where he was planning to station himself. In part because it made him angry and in part because he’d just lie about it anyway. “I trust my men.” More importantly, “where exactly are you planning on being? Somewhere bear-resistant, I hope.”

Dolls lifted his hand to touch his face without realizing he’d done it. While the rest of them were getting by on whatever clothes they’d started the day in, Dolls had produced body armor for himself, Waverly and Wynonna. “I’m going to try to keep Wynonna close to the house until we’ve got a clear shot at the revenants.”

What that meant and neither of them were going to say outloud was that Bobo and what few revenants had been willing to work with the heir were going to do all the hard work and Wynonna was going to come in when the shooting stopped. It wasn’t a _bad_ plan; it was the best one they could come up with when they had no time to do better. But it wasn’t a plan that Bobo was looking _forward_ to. 

Howard had gotten himself fully upright, he was standing there with mud caked along the front of his clothes and his palms wasting time trying to wipe themselves clean on his coat. “That just leaves Doc, doesn’t it? Which one of you is going to tell him he can’t be in the barricade?”

“He doesn’t listen to me,” Dolls said.

Bobo was snarling low in his throat, not at anyone in particular. Not even at Howard who seemed to know, the way Bobo already knew, that there was no chance Henry was going to excuse himself to safer locations. Howard hadn’t even brought it up because he thought someone could talk sense into Henry; he must have just wanted to make sure it was on the record. 

“Besides, he survived the OK Corral, this is just like that, right?” Dolls was aiming for lighthearted.

“Just like,” Howard said as he climbed out of the ditch, “if the outlaws there had semi-automatic rifles and bump stocks.”

“We’re not leaving you out here alone,” Dolls said because it must have felt like he had to. “You said it first, we _have_ to keep Wynonna alive.”

Bobo growled and then shrugged it off, “doesn’t make getting shot feel better. Make sure Howard gets one of those walkie-talkies you keep talking about.”

\--

Waverly was a bundle of nerves, moving so rapidly from one extreme to the other that it was a wonder she didn’t forget what she was doing in the middle and just start pouring boiling water on herself. “Does everyone drink coffee?” she asked (for the third time). 

Nicole was looking regretful (and afraid) just behind her, holding the last of the mismatched and chipped mugs they could find in the cupboards. “Waves,” she said softly, “I’m sure everyone just appreciates the effort.”

“I could make cocoa,” Waverly said. She dropped the coffee pot on the table and it made all the cups clatter and slosh across the turkey platter she’d been filling up. “This is insane!”

“Waverly, it is not too late for you to seek safety somewhere else. There are any number of--” Doc wasn’t the sort of man that liked to make someone else’s decisions for him. (On account of how very frequently people tried to make his for him.) But it didn’t sit right with him, how Waverly refused to move to a safer location. He respected the impulse to stay but it didn’t have to sit right with him.

“No,” she snapped at him, “not _this_ ,” she motioned at the room around her, “ _you_! Doc, you said it yourself! If you get shot, you could die! We don’t even know how many revenants are coming or who else or _what_ else!”

“I will be fine,” he said.

“You’re not even wearing a shirt,” Waverly said.

Cotton did not usually impede the flight of a bullet but that wasn’t exactly the point. Doc flattened a hand across his undershirt visible through his unbuttoned coat and shrugged. “I have found myself in gunfights dressed very similarly and I am still here. We have done everything that we can do to prepare and now we must put our faith in our brothers to keep us safe.”

Nicole set the last of the mugs on the tray and nudged Waverly’s arm. “I think the coffee will help.”

At very least, it would warm the men who had been left out in the cold. Some discussion had been had about starting a fire but Howard had all but had a fit about fire hazards and the idea had been abandoned. 

Waverly picked up the coffee pot again and finished filling the cups. Once they were filled up to the top, she set the pot back on the counter behind her. Her voice was all worry that made her face pink. “Stay alive,” she said and then she lurched forward to wrap her arms around him and dragged him into a hug he couldn’t have expected if he’d been given another hundred years to prepare. 

Even Nicole seemed surprised.

Doc pulled Waverly in a little tighter, and held her for just a minute, just long enough to kiss the top of her head so she understood that should things go very wrong, all was forgiven. At least by him. There were a number of things he had done to her that he had not yet sought forgiveness for.

When she leaned back, she was clearing her throat. “We should take the tray,” mostly to Nicole. “I don’t have any snacks. I have sugar. Should we take the sugar. We should take the sugar.”

“I’ll carry the tray,” Nicole said, “you can bring the sugar. And Doc can go ask Wynonna for a shirt. I’m sure she’s got something that would work.”

“Right,” Waverly said. “Right. Sure. Of course she does. I’ve got the sugar.” 

\--

Bobo would have preferred if Henry had not come back from the house. He was half-certain that a pouty-faced, worried-pink Earp would have been enough to make him reconsider his unspoken choice. Wynonna must not have been as cute in body armor as she was without it, because Henry came back. At least he had a shirt, even if it was bleach stained and too short. He should have just buttoned his damn coat as cold as it was even inside the RVs. 

“They aren’t going to come until after it gets dark,” Henry said. He dusted off the corner of the couch arm along the far wall and perched himself on it. “At least if they’re smart.”

“Did you hunt a lot of men after dark?” Bobo asked.

Henry’s lips pulled into a smile as he sipped at the coffee that wasn’t even hot enough to steam anymore. “A couple,” he said. “Darkness is a very convenient cover when you’re dealing with terrain such as this. Have you?”

No. There were plenty of revenants that enjoyed the hunting part; more than enough that had embraced the utter freedom that being a demon had given them. Bobo couldn’t say he’d never killed a man (because he had) but he couldn’t say he’d ever gone hunting for one. “Robert was an accountant.”

“That does explain a number of things about you.” 

It was going dark outside the filmy window. The world was washing out gray, everything was going to start looking the same. Hell had given him a lot of things but it had _not_ given him any special vision. “It’s safer on the homestead.”

“So I keep hearing.”

Bobo wanted to be mad at him. He wanted to be _furious_. He wanted to feel how he had _before_ , when it had been nothing but an inconvenience to him that Henry refused to protect himself. That he kept leaving the homestead when it was the only place he was safe from the men that were trying to sink their teeth into him (or worse). Hell, he _was_ angry and he wasn’t. He was a dozen different things all at once and not a single one of them more than the other.

(Yes he was. He was one thing more than the others.)

Henry was just sipping his coffee, biding his time. He was as outwardly as unbothered as any man could possibly be. 

“Just make sure you’ve got enough bullets to keep up,” Bobo said.

\--

Dowdy was not a man that could stand still. He had been treating space between the barricade and the homestead like his own personal racetrack, running the length of it and mumbling numbers to himself every time he made it back to the start. 

The only time he came to any kind of a pause was when he needed to catch his breath and that didn’t seem to be necessary more than once every three revolutions. Then he just stood there with his light-pink face and his soft-soft wheezes, moving restlessly on his feet. The place where he stopped wasn’t so far away from where Doc had found a nice bit of incline to lean against. 

Howard was of the mind that they should take turns as look-outs, keeping half the total in the ditch should some manner of firing start without warning. Only, it seemed, no matter how much time went by, it never quite seemed to be Doc’s turn.

“Look,” Dowdy said, “look, it wasn’t anything personal, you know? We all made the jokes and we all laughed at them but it was because we thought that as how it was, you know? Bobo,” he glanced sideways, just so he didn’t have to look at anyone too personally, “well it just seemed like the sort of thing he’d do, making a whore out of someone like you. I just wanted to say that. It wasn’t personal.”

“Why thank you,” Doc said. “That does certainly lighten my heart in these troubling times.”

Dowdy nodded. “Good luck.” Then he took off running again.

\--

Henry gave off the air of a man left sitting beside a changing room. Slouching into the dip of the ditch with his hat tipped down to cover his face. He had finally buttoned his coat just so he could tuck his hands up under his arms. He was not sleeping, but _resting_ while they had the chance. “I assume you have come to tell me that I would be safer on the homestead?”

“Would you listen?” Bobo asked. There was no graceful way to sit next to Henry; it was basically a matter of controlling your fall. He didn’t lean back into the soggy incline but look at the stars spreading across the sky. The air was so cold it had gone clear. 

“I would listen,” Henry said, “a man should always be willing to listen to ideas that oppose his own. Such as, I am all but useless on the homestead now that it has been barricaded. While I am a very good shot, there is a limit to the range of my weapons.”

“That’s because you won’t use the rifles. I get that you’ve got a reputation to keep up but we all know you weren’t so selective about the guns you used when it mattered.”

Henry snorted at that. “I was not as selective but I was _familiar_ with the weapons I used.” He pushed his hat back off his face so he could look at Bobo. “We have had this conversation. I believe it is time for a new one.”

“You don’t think it’s relevant to talk about how you might die?” 

Because that was the thing that nobody was saying outright. That growing dread that was louder than all the worry of what they might live through. It was being passed around among the revenants who didn’t even look like they understood why they _cared_. It was offered up from the Earp sisters in the guise of steaming cups of coffee and long glances trailing behind Henry every time he walked away. 

All the humans could die, but not all of them were going out of their way to put themselves in the most danger. Wynonna hadn’t said a word to him since they walked out of the forest (at least not about Henry) but she looked at him like an echo.

_You could. Because he loves you_.

Henry couldn’t have loved him because he didn’t know half the things Bobo had done. You couldn’t love a man without knowing all the important facts. (Things like, once upon a time when I was still a man, I left you in the dark just so I could feel powerful.) 

But right here, and right _now_ , Henry pulled him down with a soft hand on his face and a slow frown on his mouth. “Try to have a little more faith in me than that.” He kissed Bobo like a promise they’d have tomorrow too.

( _Because he loves you_ , Wynonna whispered.)

\--

Doc had _not_ been sleeping but it still felt like he was jolted awake when Dowdy’s hand slapped against his chest. It had been _hours_ since the sky went black; so long that he’d gotten drowsy from the cold silence that had settled over their little camp. Dowdy had been doing his circles, taking longer and longer between revolutions so the sound of his approaching footsteps hadn’t even been enough to pull Doc out of the lull of near-sleep. 

But the desperation of his hand slapping Doc across the chest and his voice like a stage whisper, hissing: “get up, Doc. Get up. They’re coming.”

It was _seconds_ , no even a full minute, after Dowdy stepped across his body to continue his ceaseless running when the first shot landed. It hadn’t made a sound in the air until it found its intended target. Even through the armored RVs, he could heard that tearing meaty sound of a body being ripped apart. 

He fixed his hat and crouched lower into the ditch. He could hear the revenants moving around in the RVs, hear the clicks of the guns being cocked. Howard was somewhere around the bend, working out if it gave them any sort of advantage to be the first people to shoot. They must have been relying on the sound of the shots giving them a better idea of where to return fire because not a single one of the revenants on their side started shooting.

But there came, from across the field, a great storm of noise. The bullets made every sound from a whistle to a pop to a scream of sound that couldn’t be put into words. The reports of the firing filled up the dark like thunder, being immediately chased after by the chaos of the bullets hitting metal, wood, rock and dirt. 

It didn’t seem to come from one _spot_ , but from every one of them all at once. It was in front of and beside and behind him. 

There was shattering glass, and the not-so-distant sound of a man shrieking in pain. 

Dowdy was back again before Doc had a chance to move. He was ducked low to the ground, running along the bottom of the ditch. “Middle, middle,” he was saying to himself. “We need you in the middle, Doc. They’re coming. They’re coming, they’re almost here.” 

Doc followed after him, crouching as he ran until Dowdy pointed him into an ugly silver RV with half-plated windows. Whiskey Jim was already inside, snarling as he rested the long barrel of a rifle on the top of the metal-plated plywood covering the window. 

“Well now, I just feel special,” he said as he pointed into the corner. 

The windows were narrow, but Doc could see the creeping shoulders of the men sneaking along the slushy ground. They’d been betting on nobody paying attention to the quiet parts. “Well hell,” he whispered. There was a stack of rifles in the corner and while he did prefer his own guns, he could not deny that they would all be better served by eliminating some of these threats before it got too much closer.

“I heard you quit your job while I was being tortured,” Jim said. “Went full Cinderella.”

“I do not know what that means.” Doc had to slide out of the corner to get a vantage point that allowed him to see. That put his side up against the narrow space between windows and he did not _care_ for that, but it would have to do. 

There was no more time for talking, as soon as he had a reasonable line of targets, he drew in a breath and started shooting.

\--

“Bobo!” Howard was shouting from down the loud. “Boss!” He wasn’t _moving_ , but his voice was going up and down as the walkie-talkie he’d been given cut in and out of spitting static-covered noise at him. “Boss! They’ve got a box of something they’re bringing up from the back. Looks heavy!”

Around the back was opposite of where he _wanted_ to go. It was farther from the sound of gunfire starting up in the middle. Away from the men that were crawling forward along the ground like a bunch of snakes. As dark as it was, nobody could even get a decent count of what was coming at them. None of the RVs even had _power_ enough to get a decent light turned on. 

Bobo growled as he started running. Howard dashed forward out of his way, calling out, “better hurry, Boss. Waverly said they’re opening it!”

It was quieter the farther he went around the bend. David was in the back, hanging half out of one of the RVs. He motioned inward and ducked out of the way. There was a clear view into the open field behind them, just enough light from the moon to see the greasy heads of the two revenants prying open a long-flat wooden box. Bobo didn’t even need to see them get it open to know what was inside. 

“Isn’t that…”

“Henry’s going to be so happy,” he muttered. “I can’t move that. Where’s Dowdy?”

“Dowdy’s running,” David said.

Of course Dowdy was running. 

“Shoot those idiots before they get the lid off.” Bobo ducked away from the window, back out through the door to see Dowdy running past back toward the sound of increasing gunfire coming from the center. “Dowdy!”

“Boss!”

“They got the whole fucking box of dynamite.”

Dowdy spun around mid-step, caught in a moment of stillness as he just sighed. It was the look of a man who could not for a moment _believe_ the luck they had. But he nodded and started jogging back. “Who’s my cover?”

“David.”

It wasn’t _ideal_ but it was better than nobody watching your back. They slid through the narrow space between one RV and the next, inching sideways forward toward the place where the two metal plates met in the middle. It was hard to see through the narrow gap, but Dowdy pushed his face against it while he held his breath. They were caught together in a place that couldn’t be escaped, protected by nothing but a paper thin sheet of metal. “Ready,” Dowdy whispered under the sound of gunshots. 

Bobo rolled the metal back with a twist of his hands and Dowdy started running like a wild horse. 

“Shit, shit, shit!” sounded like Howard shouting from the inside ring of the barricade. “Fuck!”

“What!” he shouted.

Dowdy slid to the ground because two men they hadn’t seen stood up out of the dark carrying guns that turned men into swiss cheese. 

“Doc’s been shot!” Howard shouted, there wasn’t much of a pause after he said that. Not nearly long enough for any sort of time to pass. Just long enough for the metal plates and the metal bodies of the RVs to start screaming under the strain of energy around him. 

Dowdy was sure to be filled up with holes in a second, and somewhere behind his back Henry had been _shot_. And there was nothing Bobo could do about what had already happened, but he pushed forward out of the narrow space he’d been caught in to wrap his hands around the shape of those stupid guns and _pulled_.

Some idiot among them must have decided he couldn’t take a gun they’d tied to their bodies and that was all well and _good_ for thinking. But they’d forgotten that he could stop a fucking car if he set his mind to it. Dragging two assholes across wet dirt was nothing in comparison. He pulled as they scrambled to get a hand on their guns. 

Dowdy popped back up in the distance to grab the handle of the box.

One of the two morons had enough brains to drop the gun they were getting dragged by to pull another one out of his pants. He was close enough by the time he thought of it that Bobo grabbed the rifle tied around his chest and bashed the flat end of into his frantic face. He stomped on his chest with one foot and did it again, and _again,_ and _one more time_ until the bone gave way to fleshy-wet sounds and the bastard went limp. 

Dowdy shouted, “on your right!” 

The second man had recovered enough to aim at Bobo’s back, but he didn’t manage to get his finger on the trigger faster than it was knocked out of his hand by a perfectly-aimed shot. The second bullet went through the underside of the man’s jaw and out through the top of his head. Maybe that was the sort of shooting that a revenant who had the patience to learn might have managed, someone like Hui.

But there was such an element of showing off, that Bobo didn’t even have to fully turn around to know it was _Henry_.

“It was a _graze_ ,” Henry said.

\--

It might have been a mistake to qualify the momentary quiet as a _lull_. It wasn’t a matter of having defeated the enemy, but a momentary regrouping among all parties. Howard was pacing along the central curve of the barricade, muttering to himself as information came at him from every side.

Lawrence had dragged in what few revenant corpses were close enough to the barricade to get at without exposing a vulnerability for too long. They were laying against the fence marking the boundary of the homestead waiting for Wynonna to show up and send them back to hell. Everyone was comparing wounds and reloading their weapons, taking a moment to smoke and drink and gather themselves for the next round.

Doc’s arm was _smarting_ , just singing with fresh pain, not because of the blistering hot bullet that had torn through his coat and ran across the outside of his arm but because Bobo had _demanded_ to see it. Because he was pulling at the edges of the wound like a proper medical professional just to see for himself that it was barely deep enough to qualify as a wound. It _hurt_ and it was _bleeding_ but it didn’t qualify as anything in the realm of life threatening. 

“I suppose you’ve been shot before.”

That was a stupid question to ask. “You’ve seen every inch of my skin,” he said, “I think you know I have been.”

Whiskey Jim was enjoying a long drink from a small canteen one set of stairs away from them. He made a noise like a dying man, trying not to laugh or look like he was listening in. He didn’t even so much as excuse himself but roll sideways onto his knees and climb back into the RV.

Bobo growled. 

“Dowdy said I had a box of dynamite. I am very fond of dynamite,” Doc said.

“You don’t get to keep it,” Bobo said. He finally let go of Doc’s arm so he could get his coat back on, but he wasn’t _happy_ about it. 

“No chance that was everyone?” Wynonna shouted from over by the fence. “No chance this is over and I just have to go out there and shoot all of them and we can have a drink and go to bed?”

“About a twelve percent chance!” Howard shouted from around the bend. “Twelve percent that’s it. They got the dynamite, boss. They could have anything. We should have secured the big equipment.”

Bobo snorted, “they’re not going to steal an excavator. They’d have to know how to drive it.”

“You own an excavator?” Dolls asked.

Bobo didn’t even bother to answer it. He just frowned to himself, flinching like he couldn't control it, every time Wynonna shot Peacemaker.

\--

“Who the fuck are these guys?” Whiskey Jim asked, his voice carried in the silence. There wasn’t time to find a window to look through to see who the hell he was asking about. There wasn’t even time to fully hear the question and _understand_ it before rapid thunder of gunfire started again. 

This wasn’t a matter of too many men with guns shooting all at once, but the quick-and-ceaseless noise of few men with rapid-fire weapons. The bullets broke through the glass, and wood and the thin metal sheets. They flew into the furniture stacked into corners of the RVs. They ate through every obstacle and didn’t _stop_. 

His men were shouting and _screaming_. 

Henry gasped, “fuck,” as he threw himself off the stairs they’d been sitting on to land on his back in the dirt. The bullets were zipping over their heads, aimed chest height toward the homestead beyond the barricade. 

The walkie-talkie was _screaming_ around the bed, filling up what little space there was beneath the cacophony with a static-filled demand for information. Howard wasn’t barking an answer, Bobo could see his lifeless feet in a tumble just after the curve. 

“We’re pinned down!” Dowdy screamed from the opposite way. “What are we doing?”

Henry had landed on his back but he rolled onto his belly, dug his elbows into the dirt so he could crawl forward. He wasn’t making an attempt to slither into the RVs being torn apart by onslaught, but into the squat, narrow space beneath them. “I need an opening I can shoot through,” he called back.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Bobo shouted at him.

“Oh, were you enjoying this?”

Bobo rolled onto his gut and peeled the bottom edge of the metal sheeting inward, just far enough a man might be able to see out of it and take a shot. Not even big enough you’d see it if you weren’t looking for it. 

“Boss!” Dowdy shouted.

“Go under!” 

Henry snarled a sound behind him, sounded something like, “could you have made this _smaller_?” But the sound of his guns, like a sweet promising whisper in comparison, didn’t seem to be slowed down by his bitching. 

“Watch your feet!” the men on the other side were shouting to one another. “Watch your feet! Watch your feet!”

\--

Perhaps it had been _naive_ of him to think that they were only up against revenants. While he had very few compunctions about shooting any man that was trying to shoot him regardless of their humanity status he simply hadn’t expected to shoot a man through the thigh and find a great fount of bright-bright red blood. 

Revenants were fond of cussing when you hit them in non-lethal places. Some of them let out a sound like a squeal because regardless of whether or not it killed you, getting shot in the dick still hurt. But this man screamed in a way that Doc had only ever heard humans manage. 

“These are _people_ ,” he hissed. 

“Fucking Cryderman.” Bobo grabbed him by the leg to pull him backward out from under the RV. The hail of bullets had been slowed to a dull trickle, spread out mostly to the sides of where they were sitting. “Shooting them in the ankle isn’t going to kill them.”

Well, not it wasn’t but it was sure as hell effective at making them drop their guns. They were rolling in the grass, trying to crawl forward or back, leaving streaks of blood everywhere they went. “First you didn’t want me here and now you’re telling me to go shoot men in the head.”

Bobo was certainly going to say something about how he did _not_ want that. His whole mouth was curving around some sort of thing that _needed_ to be said, but he didn’t get the breath to make the words because Wynonna came sliding across the grass to crouch at their sides with Peacemaker in one hand and her arm wrapped around her bent legs.

“Hey guys,” she said _breathlessly_ , “humans or revenants?”

“Humans,” Bobo said.

“You are not supposed to--” 

But Wynonna cocked her eyebrow up at him. “I have the demon killing gun, and it’s _boring_ back there where the bullets don’t reach. So I thought, hey, why not get out there on the front lines and shoot some of the demons before they start popping up out of the grass again.”

“They’ve been at the front mostly,” Bobo said. He didn’t want to add, “I’ll go with you.” But there was an unanswered assault of bullets between where they were and where they would need to get. Nobody caught in that little patch of hell was going to get _anywhere_ if they didn’t have some manner of shield against the endless rain. 

“I will attempt to do something about the shooters from here,” Doc said.

“Right,” Wynonna said, “Dolls is back there, helping--uh--Dowdy?” 

That was downright charitable of Dolls. Doc didn’t stick around to watch the pair of them creeping forward with ducked heads and bent backs, trying to stay low enough to avoid the bullets. It was always better not to get too caught up in watching someone you loved walking into danger when you couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

He climbed into the swaying, unsteady, RV at his back. Whiskey Jim was a groaning corpse in the quiet, missing a good part of his face and mess of flesh from just about everywhere else. The side of his mouth he did have was twitching with disgust. 

Doc couldn’t see any of the bastards mounting the assault two RVs down from where he stood. He could hear the sound of the shots. “This is _unacceptable_ ,” he said to nobody in particular. The men out in the grass were still holding onto their wounds (at least the two that hadn’t bled out from having an important blood vessel shredded) and they were so absorbed in their own bad luck they didn’t even see him before they were dead.

“This is a bad idea,” he said to Whiskey Jim’s holey corpse.

The only answer he got was a gurgle that seemed to agree the whole fucking thing had been a pretty stupid idea to start with.

\--

Howard’s corpse was a mess of blood but getting riddled with bullets did that sort of thing to you. Wynonna made a low noise as they crept over him, hissing in disgust when her hand pressed against his gut and a fresh squish of something rolled out.

“Oh that’s disgusting,” she whispered, “oh can he hear me?”

That depended on which of his internal organs was regenerating. A man couldn’t hear without a brain, but everything else just trapped you into a soup semi-consciousness where you could almost make sense of the world. Even if Howard had been awake to hear her, he wouldn’t have taken it personal. Any man with the inside of his body oozing to the outside didn’t have the proper mindset to take things personal. 

They’d reached the worst of the shooting. The RV had been shot so many times it was caving in on itself. And the bastards on the other side hadn’t thought it might have been enough. Maybe they were trying to reduce it to rubble so they could march through. 

“Keep going,” Bobo said. He leaned back against the wheel and concentrated on creating a sort of tunnel to send all the bullets through. If he could see the bastards, he could have sent the bullets back at them, but the best he managed was to arch them higher into the air and send them back into the dirt. It muffled the sound at the end but it kicked up a hell of a storm of filth in the process. 

Wynonna didn’t pause for a second, just scurried forward with her head down, making a long-shriek of sound as she went. Once she was through, she twisted around, “are you coming?”

“Go!” he shouted because it was _easier_ than trying to figure out how to convey that it wasn’t that easy to redirect bullets and _move_. That it took _concentration_ to move metal at all and even more to move it when it was already _moving_ at the sort of speed these bullets were. He didn’t even collapse the tunnel until Wynona reached the ditch at the front. 

“Boss!” Dowdy shouted as he hit the dirt at Bobo’s side. He was splattered in blood and covered in dirt from his nose to his knees. “That Dolls guy got shot. What do I do with him?”

“Is he _dead_ ,” Bobo snarled at him.

The bullets wouldn’t _stop_ but they’d started walking to the side, inching across what was left of the RV at their backs. It was chewing through what was left of the support holding the roof up so it was groaning as it lurched downward. Just under the thunderous sound of the assault was the sound of the men laughing.

“No,” Dowdy said. He slid backward in the dirt, resting on his hands and knees like that was going to keep him from getting shot at this rate. “I don’t know--it’s his shoulder. He’s not _dead_ but what do I do?”

“This is not a good place to be!” Dolls shouted. He _was_ bleeding, right onto all that body armor he’d taken the time to put on. “What the fuck is Doc doing?” He threw himself into the dirt opposite them, making a show out of checking his bullets as he motioned upward.

“What?” Dowdy whispered.

Bobo couldn’t _see_ what Henry was doing, but he heard the shots he fired. He could hear the metal whine where he must have been on top of one of the RVs. 

Dowdy rolled onto the side so he was laying along Dolls side, whistled to himself as he said, “oh, he’s crazy.”

“Stupid,” Dolls amended.

The laughter gave way to a startled shout. All those bullets that had been eating their way toward his head jerked to the side, cutting a long curved line up toward the roof of the RV to the left. Henry wasn’t even smart enough to start cursing because he _obviously_ didn’t give a fuck about staying alive.

The RV against his back rocked and he pushed into it. It was a wild and out of control thing; nothing but a surge of energy that had no purpose and no destination. But he coiled it in his hands as his heart went rapid and _hot_. Those stupid men that had been laughing were calling at one another now, shouting for reinforcements about the man on the roof. 

Bobo had his hands tangled up in all that energy, he could feel it winding around and around the RV, until the shape of it was as real against his palms as anything he’d ever touched. When he stood up, he dragged it with him and the RV shuddered and split and _flipped_ all at once. It landed with a crush of bones and flesh. The last terrible shudder of the roof ripping free from the structure. 

One man must have lived through having it dropped on him because he was just _screaming_. 

It was too fucking _loud_. The guns and the men and his own people, all of them, all at once, all making noise. Bobo ripped a long strip of the steel out of the exposed frame and caught it in his hand. The man was half-pinned, crushed all down the right side. He was screaming for death or salvation, but still waving his free arm over his face like he could stop Bobo from stabbing him in the throat.

“Right, right, right,” Dowdy was chanting behind him, “get Doc off the roof. Get Doc off the roof. I got it, Boss. Get Doc _off_ the roof.”

Dolls were still laying in the dirt when Bobo came back, looking peaked with shock. His mouth was hanging open as he pointed the barrel of his gun toward the tires pointed upward. “You could have said you could do that.”

“You’ve told me all your secrets?” Bobo asked.

Henry hit the ground with Dowdy following after him like a worried hen. His hat was missing but there were no new bullet wounds on him. Bobo was expecting some kind of reproach about how Doc didn’t need anyone saving him, so he’d been working out a rebuttal about how stupid men didn’t get in the way of bullets like that. 

But Henry fisted both hands in his coat to pull him forward and kissed him. They didn’t have the _time_ for any kind of thought that wasn’t based on how to survive, but Henry’s body went long-and-lean and pressed up against his as tight as it could get. He was on his toes with his tongue in Bobo’s mouth and one of his hands moving up to grip at his face. 

Bobo was only just catching up to that kiss when Henry pulled away with a filthy grin and turned back to grab his hat out of Dowdy’s hand. 

“Where’s Wynonna?” he asked but he didn’t need an _answer_ , he went toward the sound of bullets. He just walked himself back toward the danger like he hadn’t just barely escaped with his life.

\--

That rapid hailstorm sound of bullets had given way to an almost sedate pace of firing from the front of the barricade. The revenants were barely a nuisance in comparison, but that did not mean they should be underestimated. Doc was taking stock of the RVs that he was walking past, peeking through the open door frames to see if there was any worthwhile cover left. 

“Henry!” Bobo did not wait for an answer but grabbed his sore arm just above the elbow and below the tender wound. His face wasn’t struck dumb by shock or pink-and-red from rage anymore. No, just then, he looked a lot like a foggy memory Doc couldn’t quite remember. Like a man with timid hands and red plaid that hadn’t quite made a significant impression on anyone. 

“We do not have time for stopping,” Doc said. “We do not even know if Wynonna has back-up and we do not leave men by themselves in gunfights, Bobo.”

Dolls had recovered from his shock as well, he was gripping his bleeding shoulder in one hand and scooting around them toward the grow sound of assault from the front. “You coming?” he asked.

“We are.” 

Bobo growled in a way that made the RV to their right rattle on it’s half-collapsed tires. All that raw energy that he’d thrown into the last one was still snapping in the air around them, looking for any place that it could land. That was a wild feeling, being so close to energy like that, but they couldn’t keep giving away what little protection they had because things were bad for a _moment_. “Just _stop_ ,” Bobo snarled at him. “Just stop trying to get killed for _one_ minute.”

“I’m not trying to get _killed_ ,” he snapped back, “I am putting a great deal of effort into the opposite. This is a _gunfight_.” That did not need to be said, not with the soundtrack at their back. Not when they’d been pinned down by a rain of bullets. “The only acceptable option is to shoot your enemies before they shoot you. I am sorry that I cannot do that in a way that--”

“They’re not _your_ enemies,” Bobo cut in.

“They are _ours_.” But that wasn’t the important part, the _important_ part was that there were men behind them caught in the line of fire and both of them had unique abilities that would benefit their friends. They were putting people in danger, hanging back here to have this little _talk_. This was the sort of thing a man said before he got started or after he was finished but it didn’t fit in to this tense space in the center of a fight. 

“Ours?” Bobo growled at him. Apparently he had not considered that Doc might feel equal ownership of the situation they found themselves in. He was infuriated and _aching_ with something that he couldn’t put a name to and it showed on his face and in his hands half-curled into fists. “This isn’t your fight; you don’t have to get yourself killed over this.”

“This _is_ my fight,” he said (as patiently as he could), “because the people that I love are in it and we do not leave the people we love in a shit situation like the one we find ourselves in. I do not have the _time_ to stand here and explain the particulars to you at the moment but we _will_ need to have a thorough conversation on the subject when this is finished.” 

There wasn’t anything left to say about it, so he didn’t intend to stand there another moment. Bobo didn’t stop him when he turned around to start walking away. He didn’t reach out, he didn’t jog to catch up. He stayed where he stood, bristling up with emotions he couldn’t name, warping the shape of the metal all around him. 

“I left you in the well!” Bobo shouted from behind him. 

Doc couldn’t have imagined any set of words that would make him stop, but he couldn’t have imagined Bobo Del Rey choosing to say those words to him _now_ either. He half turned back to look at him, half caught between not wanting to hear an explanation and _needing_ one. “Don’t do this,” he said, but he meant _not now_.

“It was me,” Bobo said softly, “it was Robert. You wouldn’t give me the ring. I knew you were there and I left you.”

It didn’t _feel_ like a surprise. It didn’t come to him like a shock. It was as sore as a fresh bruise being pressed just to make it _hurt_ , but it almost felt like he knew it was coming. Doc sighed, because it was too _enormous_ to think around. Because he didn’t have the _time_. He said, “shut up, _Robert_.” 

Then he turned forward again because a man didn’t leave his friends in a shit situation.

\--

Time must have passed because Henry was _gone_ and Bobo was still standing where he’d been left. Time had to have moved, because Bobo had not. He was still trying to work out how to breath, reasoning with himself about how he couldn’t _possibly_ have expected a different outcome.

(Reminding himself, even, that this was what he’d almost thought he wanted.)

Everything had gone gray and distant. Even the _noise_ had taken on a fuzziness, like he was hearing everything through cotton rolled up and pushed into his ears. 

It felt like a bubble popping, the growing clarity of the sound from behind him, Howard’s wet voice filled up with fear and his own blood shouting, “ _bear_ , bear! There’s a fucking _bear_!”

“Big ass bear,” was Dowdy running face-first into a bad situation. 

Bobo turned around in time to see Dowdy lift the shotgun he’d been running with. It wasn’t enough power to stop a bear that size (but it would piss her off) but that didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes you didn’t have the right sort of brain for the problem in front of you. “Don’t shoot her!” he shouted, he flicked his hand sideways and threw the shotgun to the side. It slid across the grass and hit the fence marking the edge of the boundary.

“What the fuck _should_ we do?” Dowdy shouted. He jogged backward because the bear was snarling at him, all bare teeth and hot breath. 

Howard was alive but he couldn’t move yet. He was close enough to the bears paws that he was cringing every time she moved, trying his best not to start shrieking and call attention to how he wasn’t as much a corpse as he looked like. 

“Get to Wynonna,” Bobo said, “get her the hell out of here.”

Dowdy didn’t look like that was something he _wanted_ to do but he spun in a circle and took off running back the long way around. Howard was laying still, looking over at him out of the corner of his eyes. “This is bad, boss.”

Well, Bobo had been eaten alive by this bear before. If he had to choose (and nobody had ever asked his preferences) he would have picked the wolf. But at least the bear moved slower, at least she had to deal with all that extra weight. She was sniffing the air now, trying to pick up the scent she wanted under the stink of gunpowder and blood. Even the dirt he’d kicked up was still hanging in the air between them. 

“I _am_ impressed.”

Bobo hadn’t heard that voice in almost a hundred years. If he’d been asked to describe it yesterday, he might have said it was a long cold shiver up the back of your neck. But he knew it as soon as he heard it; he remembered every single detail of the man it belonged to. He didn’t even have to look to the side. “Lou.”

“Last time we saw one another you couldn’t even levitate a penny.” Lou always sounded like he was forgiving you for something. It made his voice soft; it made him _soothing_. That was just one of those things nature did to make sure predators got enough to eat. 

Bobo looked at him as the bear lurched forward. Her breath was close enough to be a wind against his coat. The smell of her mouth was rancid as the yellow of her teeth. 

“Now look at you,” Lou rested his hand along the flipped RV, patted it like he was _proud_. “I have heard some _stories_ about you. I confess.” He stepped forward, close enough his hand was trailing along the bear’s flank. “I was _surprised_. You were always so concerned with projecting a certain image. I always understood that, considering who you _were_? I wouldn’t want that getting around either.” 

The bear’s mouth was opening like a yawn, her throat was working out a growl that sounded every bit like _hunger_ to him. 

“Going soft for Wyatt’s old boyfriend,” Lou said when he was close enough to touch. “When will you learn?”

“I am going to kill you,” Bobo said very quietly.

“Still,” Lou said with a smile, “if I remember Mr. Holliday correctly I can see the appeal. He isn’t my type, but he’s appealing in his own way. Of course,” Lou dropped his hand away from the bear to look at the mess all around him, “I don’t really care about all this. I’m not interested in this,” his nose wrinkled up in distaste, “mundane business of heirs and curses.”

“Seems like you put a lot of trouble into something you’re not interested in.”

Lou was closer than the bear now, sliding up so he could push his hand between the weight of Bobo’s coat and his skin. His fingers were long and _cold_ , almost like a snake, easing the coat back off his shoulder. “Look around you,” he said when there was no space between them, “I’ve waited a hundred years for this. I hope he was worth it.”

Howard was just _watching_ , looking like he was going to say anything at all. There wasn’t anything you could say to men like Lou. There was no point in giving them the satisfaction of trying.

“The thing about humans is they die too fast,” Lou said. “I imagine if I had a _revenant_ to use as bait, whatever humans were presently marked would have time to find some way to cleanse themselves of the curse. Don’t you?”

“Boss,” Howard said like he couldn’t help it.

Lou didn’t wait for an answer. He couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn't obeyed. He was already turning around, “leave the coat. You won’t need it.”

\--

The sun was turning the sky gray before the last shot was fired. Wynonna had collapsed against the far wall of the RV, tucked behind the remains of some giant wooden monstrosity. The fight had died where they were, and just for a minute (or five, it must have been five) the two of them hadn’t moved to follow it. 

The last pops of gunfire were distant, spread out; they echoed back down to where Doc was leaning against the wall like they were as exhausted as he was. Whoever was left out there was either the most dedicated gentleman that ever lived or simply refused to go without a fight. 

“Doc,” Wynonna said, “I’m really fucking tired.” 

“It isn’t over until the dead are counted and the wounded are tended to,” he said. But he wanted it over. He wanted to slide down the wall and lay on the shattered bits of metal, glass and wood just because his body was begging for a reprieve. 

Wynonna lifted Peacemaker so it hung from her hand and shook it, “I’m out. I don’t have any bullets left.”

Well that was an easy thing to fix. There weren’t any spares in this RV on account of how they’d already used them up, but Howard had made certain to stock more than they could possibly use. It was just a matter of finding someone that knew where to look. 

Doc pushed himself off the wall and offered his hand to help hoist her to her feet. “Come on, now,” he said, “you can’t leave a thing half-finished.”

The dark had hidden the worst of the damage. Even if they could have seen, there hadn’t been time to take in the extent of what had been ruined. Everything from the settling RVs to the fence posts were riddled with holes. The dirt itself was kicked up and floating. The poor mailbox was in pieces hanging off the post. 

“You just fixed that,” Wynonna whispered. 

Dowdy jumped out the doorway of the RV just on the other side of the homestead’s driveway. All that frantic energy that had driven him in endless circles seemed to be sagging out of him; he wilted back onto the RV steps with a laugh. “Shit,” he shouted, “I thought for sure we were fucked when that bear got in.”

“Bear?” Wynonna repeated.

“Dowdy,” Doc called back, “we need bullets.”

“Shotgun? Handgun? Revolver? What kind? I’ve got bullets of all kinds.” He didn’t get up but sag back into the door frame behind him. For a minute he looked like a kid kept out after dark, and then he got back to his feet. “Peacemaker size bullets, I assume.”

Wynonna was already on her way to meet him, saying: “as many as you’ve got. I don’t know how many revs are still out there. Hey,” she half turned to look at him, “find Dolls, we have to figure out what to do about the people bodies.”

Doc meant to tip his hat as a sign of acknowledgement but when he lifted his hand he did not find it resting on his head. He had the memory of it being knocked off when he had to fling himself into a wall to avoid a surprise bullet. Retrieving it would require him to climb back into the RV that had taken to moaning whenever it was stepped on. 

Still, a man had to have his hat.

By the time he stepped back out of the RV, with his hat set as correctly as it could on his head, Dolls had done all the work of finding him. He was blood-soaked and mud-splattered but very much alive and frowning. “This is a shit show,” he said as if he’d been holding it in.

“Finally, we agree.”

“Might need to get your…” He floundered at what word he wanted to use. No doubt he was cycling through the old favorites. Things like _pimp_ and _fuck buddy_ and _frat boy friend_. “Bobo to get this bullet out of my shoulder.”

“I’m certain he would be delighted to help if asked properly.” Wherever he’d gone off to. 

Howard came around the long curve, dragging his feet through the loose dirt with one of his arms gripping his waist. He wasn’t all the way upright but tipping to the side as his other arm swung like dead weight. All of his usual charm (or lack thereof) was missing from his waxy face, he came to a shuddering stop.

“Howie,” Dolls said in a manner that one might have easily taken as _nice_. It was so close to affectionate that it was downright unbelievable. 

Howard must not have had the energy to spare worrying over looking at Dolls when he was talking. All of his attention was settled on Doc. He was gathering himself up just so he had the breath to say, “Lou’s got Bobo.”

Nothing else needed to be said so it didn’t make sense how Howard just _kept_ talking.

“He got in with the bear and nothing stops the skinwalker and Bobo’s always had a rule about how you can’t kill her. It’s not fair, he says. She doesn’t want to do it; she’s trapped like we are. And Lou--”

“Doc,” Dolls said very softly.

“Which way did they leave?”

“Doc,” Dolls said again, “let me get Wynonna. Don’t do anything stupid, let me get Wynonna.” He was trying to move backward and stay in the same place all at once. It made his every motion something like a hop until he was far enough away there was no point in looking back.

“Dowdy knows where he lives,” Howard said.

“Well,” Doc said, “tell him to bring bullets. Which way did they go?”

Howard wasn’t sorry at all; he was working off the sort of faith a man had in a monster. Every single one of the revenants had been alive at a time when Wyatt Earp was a good man and that meant that every single one of them knew _exactly_ what sort of person Doc Holliday really was. He said, “out at the tipped RV, toward the trees.”

What he meant was, make him _bleed_.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on tumblr at bewareofchris.tumblr.com! Come talk to me about these morons.


End file.
